Author: Andrew MacIntyre, ANU

Barack Obama’s upcoming visit to Indonesia and Australia is likely to be one of the less difficult and more gratifying international missions he undertakes this year. But along with the surges of goodwill that will greet him in both countries, there will also be opportunities– in partnership with Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Kevin Rudd – to advance significant common causes in the region and globally. And Yudhoyono’s separate bilateral visit to Canberra the week before gives added weight to the moment.

With climate change sliding down the agenda in all three countries for now, the big issue on which the three leaders will find common cause is the G20. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Christopher Findlay, Adelaide University

Balanced, inclusive, sustainable and knowledge-based – these are the dimensions of growth which APEC is talking about. Put their first letters together and you get BISK.

This agenda comes out of a number of forces for change, including the response to the global financial crisis, the concerns which have been raised about the distribution of the benefits of growth within economies (and between them), the intersection of these developments with the climate change debate, and the twittering rate of technological change in the digital world. Read the rest of this entry »

Authors: Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya, Columbia University

Lagging employment recovery and continuing high levels of unemployment have marked the macroeconomic scenario in the United States. So it is natural that the United States, which chaired the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh, would use its privileged position as the host to invite the US secretary of labour, a well-known union activist, to convene a meeting of the employment and labour ministers on the jobs situation prior to the next G20 heads of state meeting in Canada.

The macroeconomic aspects of the labour situation are indeed a proper focus of such a meeting. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Yoichi Funabashi

This year will be the crucial test of whether the administration led by the Democratic Party of Japan can develop into a vigorous, staying force. Its greatest challenges lie in the areas of diplomacy and national security.

On January 4th, in his first news conference of the year, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama said, ‘About half of domestic politics is, in a sense, taken up by foreign affairs and national security.’ Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Suman Bery, NCAER

What does it mean to be an emerging market? Is it an honour or a trap? Seen from within, India remains a country with the largest number of poor and malnourished people in the world, trying to make its way in a world dominated by countries considerably more affluent than her. This is no doubt the self-perception shared also by the citizens of other important emerging markets, such as Brazil, China and South Africa. This self-perception, in turn, is what generates the sense of entitlement to differentiated treatment in global affairs, as I discuss more fully below.

Shift the kaleidoscope slightly, though, and you begin to see the same countries increasingly portrayed in the legislatures and media of the rich countries as aggressive, fast-growing countries with world-beating capabilities in several fields, commanding increasing regional and global influence through the activities of both their governments and private sectors. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Peter Drysdale

This year has seen a remarkable change in the world economic order, with the establishment of the G20 as the premium international forum for dialogue on international economic and related issues. The significance of this change in global arrangements is yet to be fully absorbed. So far there have been three G20 meetings — in Washington, London, and Pittsburgh. The next will take place in June in Toronto. In November the G20 goes to Seoul.

The meeting in Seoul symbolises the shift in the structure of world economic power towards Asia. SaKong Il, who writes this week’s lead for us, will coordinate Korea’s hosting of the Summit in Seoul as special adviser to President Lee Muyng-bak. As Dr SaKong says, since its inception in the mid-1970s, the G7 acted as if it were the informal global steering committee for global economic and financial issues. Read the rest of this entry »

Guest Author: Il SaKong, Chair Korea Summit Coordinating Committee

Since its inception in the mid-1970s, the G7 acted as if it were the informal global steering committee for global economic and financial issues. But over the last couple of decades many considered the G7 lacked political legitimacy because it did not include the major emerging players in the world economy. These critics rightly claimed that although the G7 was only an informal global steering committee, it needed to reflect the shift in global economic power that has taken place over recent decades.

Last November, in the midst of the unprecedented global financial and economic crisis, the G20 Summit—instead of G7—was held in Washington. Read the rest of this entry »

Guest Author: Milan Zavadjil, IMF Indonesia

By now it is well known that Indonesia is weathering the global financial crisis (GFC) better than most countries. This is usually explained by lower dependence on exports, as well as the stimulus provided through fiscal and monetary policies.

Nonetheless, there is another reason behind Indonesia’s strong performance. Cautious policies by Indonesia’s government, banks, corporations and households over the past decade have resulted in low debt levels and limited refinancing needs. This served the country especially well in late 2008 and early 2009, when liquidity tightened around the world. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Wendy Dobson, University of Toronto

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s attendance at the APEC leaders’ meeting in Singapore this weekend shouldn’t be treated with a yawn – the meetings are part of a complex game in which our ideas, as co-chair with South Korea of the G7/G20 process in 2010, will count.

Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation could evolve significantly in the next few years. The unique region has the world’s four largest economies: China, India, Japan and the United States. China and India, the world’s most populous countries, are currently its most dynamic economies. Japan, with Australia’s help, has pushed for regional trade and financial institutions to attract the two increasingly important emerging giants into co-operating on regional projects, rather than pursuing rivalries. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Peter Drysdale, ANU.

Yesterday in Washington, Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the US-ASEAN Business Council. It was an occasion dignified by tributes from two former US Presidents and presentations from former Secretaries of State, Henry Kissinger and George Shultz.

Lee’s speech traversed the implications of the shifts in world power and the institutional changes that are under way or in contemplation, and deserves close study, especially for those who are students of how thinking in Singapore might develop towards the Rudd and Hatoyama proposals for renovating regional architecture. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Rajiv Kumar

The Pittsburgh Summit has clearly pronounced that ‘Today, we designated the G-20 as the premier forum for our international economic cooperation.’

This should normally imply the demise of G8, which has so far been the premier informal forum for global governance. It seems, however, that G8 will continue to function, albeit economic issues may be formally off its agenda, which could hen­ceforth be more focused on geo-strategic and political issues. This will result in a two-track global governance architecture, which, in my view, does not really work.

Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Frank Jotzo, ANU

At the Pittsburgh G20 meeting, Indonesia’s President Yudhoyono (SBY) reportedly said that Indonesia had decided on a national climate change action plan ‘that will reduce our emissions by 26 per cent by 2020 from BAU (Business As Usual)’, and by up to 41 per cent with international support.

This would be a substantial reduction, including in global terms.

Read the rest of this entry »

Guest Author, Rajendra Abhyankar, Asia Foundation

For a country where job-creation has always been more important than wealth creation, the idea of a jobless recovery just does not exist. To meet the needs of its vast population, 65 per cent of whom are below age 35, the government is under constant pressure to create (literally) new jobs and succeeds by bringing in 12 to 15 million jobs each year. Yet, India is running to standstill. Hence the crucial importance of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGA) that assures 100 days employment to every able-bodied person in the countryside. With the economic forecast looking up, the scheme has just been restructured to cover a larger segment of the population.

Read the rest of this entry »

Guest Author: Nina Hachigian, Center for American Progress & Bruce Jones, Brookings Institution

The agenda for this week’s meeting of the Group of 20 developed and developing nations is full, but when the leaders of all these countries sit down in Pittsburgh to discuss banking regulation, energy and poverty alleviation, one question will not be on the table—the question of who should be at the table in the first place.

Deciding which nations will sit at the global decision-making table is more politically charged than whether to tie bankers’ bonuses to the risks they take or whether countries can and should stop subsidizing fossil fuel consumption. Resolving which nations will try to forge consensus on these and other critical questions, however, is key to determining whether any resolving actually gets done.

Read the rest of this entry »

Guest Author: Uri Dadush, Carnegie Endowment

The Great Financial Crisis is far from over, but a stimulus-triggered recovery is now taking hold. The contours of the post-crisis economy are already emerging—from the sharply rising public debt levels in most industrial countries to the severely impaired balance sheets of banks and households in countries at the epicenter of the banking disaster, including the United States, the UK, and several smaller European countries. At the same time, China, India, Brazil, and many other emerging markets, which were badly affected at first, demonstrated remarkable resilience in the face of the crisis and have confirmed both their attractiveness as long-term investment destinations and their growing economic and political clout.

The upcoming G20 summit, which will bring together leaders of the largest developing and industrial economies, was born of the crisis, and is the best available option to deal with the post-crisis world. Read the rest of this entry »